Television, our culture’s primary storytelling medium, and fine art rarely overlap. Unless you’re sawing cows in half, perpetuating harmful art stereotypes by being crazy and dying young or hoaxing the British Museum with faux-neolithic art, don’t expect to see much art on television. Without public programming like Art 21 and Sister Wendy, the only time you see a painting on TV is when the Discovery Channel can do a movie tie in, ala The Da Vinci Code. But the world of television in topsy-turvy, writerless and adrift right now, forcing the hosts of talk shows (our prime storytelling medium’s most important storytellers) to engage in all sorts of tomfoolery to keep on the air – hence lots of unscripted video segments.
Enter the Colbert Report, where genius/idiot savant Stephen Colbert has engaged in a three-part series, National Treasure, Portrait of Stephen, wherein he attempts to get his portrait of himself, standing in front of a portrait of himself, standing in front of a portrait of himself entered into the collection of the Smithsonian Institution. After being rebuffed in the first two segments, in part three, Colbert strikes gold at the National Portrait Gallery (warning – video will follow brief Navy commercial), where he convinces the institution to display his portrait. It will be hanging above a water fountain, between the men’s and women’s restrooms, adjacent to the America’s President’s exhibit, for an all too brief six weeks.
The best part of the whole thing is the tremendous amount of publicity that the National Portrait Gallery gets out of the whole thing. How often do they get any kind of national coverage for anything?
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